Love Means Nothing
by Rebriwien
Summary: Golden Pair angst, Oishi POV. Eiji confesses, Oishi can't handle it.


Title: Love Means Nothing  
Pairing & warnings: more angst and denial than anything else (Golden Pair, shounen-ai)  
Disclaimer: TeniPuri isn't mine, I'm just playing with it.  
Other: Oishi POV. Probably contains lots of grammar errors, English is not my first language. May or may not continue.

(---)

When I was in junior high school, I had no idea what I would be doing in four or five years. I knew that after high school I'd probably go to some university to study something to get a good job, but it was just a thought sitting in the back of my head. I was only fifteen, I didn't have to make up my mind yet.

There was only one thing I expected from future. At that time, it felt simple, but it turned out to be totally unrealistic. It was tennis. You see, I spent all my time in junior high playing tennis and so did all my friends. Every morning and afternoon I attended club practise, every lunch break I ate with other regular members, every day I stayed after school to help Tezuka with paperwork or to lock up the changing room, every evening I played at public courts just for fun or hanged out with other players, every weekend and school holiday there was some tournament or training camp. I didn't even think there was anything weird in that. After all, there were others who trained harder. Others, who were even more fanatic than me.

I thought it would be like that forever. I thought we would always play tennis and I thought we would always do it together. I thought junior high was a beginning, not the end. Somehow, winning the national tournament turned out to be the latter.

I remember how playing in the finals felt like. It was like we were on fire, able to run faster, jump higher, hit harder and return every ball. And we won. It was the best thing I'd ever felt. But after that, playing tennis just didn't feel the same. I still play every now and then, but it's like playing a different game.

Or maybe it was because of what happened a couple of months after the tournament. If winning had felt good, this feeling was totally different. It was like I was witnessing two different scenarios.

In one scenario I was eating ramen with my best friend Kikumaru Eiji in our favourite ramen shop, discussing tennis, cursing the upcoming high school entrance exams that were eating our playing time and plotting on how we could get our whole tennis team to apply and get accepted into Seigaku High School so we could continue playing together.

In the other scenario we were in the same ramen shop with the same plates in front of us and just when I was about to ask Eiji if he thought we should throw a goodbye party for Kawamura, who would be quitting tennis after graduation, he suddenly took a deep breath and quickly said: "I love you." Unfortunately, that was the moment I crashed back to reality, and it was this second scenario that I found myself in.

I think we sat there for a few minutes though at that time it felt like time had stopped. First I waited for him to start laughing and tell me it was just a bad joke, but after watching his expression slowly change from waiting to worried it dawned to me that it wasn't going to happen. I closed my gaping mouth and started to do what I do best - panic.

He couldn't love me. Love meant nothing. He was my best friend. We played doubles together. How could he destroy all that with love? I found myself getting angry at him for putting me in this position. What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to say to him?

Maybe he hadn't meant it that way after all. Maybe he had just meant that I was his best friend and he was afraid we wouldn't be able to see each other so much or play tennis together in high school? Had Inui been there, he would have told me that the chance of Eiji meaning it that way was less than 0,01 per cent, but I had to give it a try.

"Eiji... You're my best friend, too, and..."

He usually had a certain cat-like appearance, but now he looked like a kicked puppy. I had to stop.

"Eiji," I sighed. "What did you mean by that?"

He didn't want to talk about it anymore. My response had been wrong. I hoped he had realized that what he had said was wrong and he hadn't really meant it. After pretending for a few minutes that my noodles were the most interesting thing I'd ever seen I asked him about Kawamura's party. He said it was a good idea, a bit too enthusiastically to sound genuine. I couldn't think of anything else to say. For the first time there was an uncomfortable silence between us. We finished our ramen, said bye and went home.

I guess I should have got worried when he didn't call me the next day. Or the day after that. We saw each other again at school and I thought things would be back to normal, but he still didn't call me until after a few weeks. He asked me to come play doubles to the street courts with Inui and Kaidoh. Kaidoh was only in the second grade and Inui had probably already deduced which questions they were going to ask him in his high school entrance exams, but we ordinary humans had to prepare the old-fashioned way. I told him I had to study and asked if he wanted to come to my place and join me. He said maybe later but never turned up. A couple of weeks later I wanted a break from studying and headed to the courts. He was there playing doubles with Fuji. I went back home without greeting them.

At school we had had to reduce the amount of tennis practices to once a week to get more study time. Even then, most of the seniors didn't attend. The nationals were over and exams awaited. Needless to say, we saw each other even less than before. Every day I told myself that after finishing this book or those exercises or that essay I would call him and we would go play street tennis or watch a movie or something. I never did, and before I even noticed it was already graduation day, I had my diploma and was posing for a million photos with my classmates. When I got home my graduation party had already begun and I spent the rest of the day greeting the neighbours, thanking my aunt from Okinawa for her present and telling my grandfather from Nagano about how I had been accepted into this really prestigious high school thanks to all my hard studying. It wasn't until very late that night just before falling asleep that I realized I had forgot to say goodbye to Eiji.


End file.
